


The Real Hero

by HeartOfStars



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Vignette
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 16:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 5,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22259431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartOfStars/pseuds/HeartOfStars
Summary: The present knows him as Tony Stark, but the world will remember him as Iron Man.A series of vignettes chronicling Tony's character development from Iron Man to Endgame. Lots of tears and spoilers.
Relationships: Happy Hogan & Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Kudos: 10





	1. The First Miracle

He is Tony Stark.

He’s the genius son of Howard Stark, and more. Everyone loves him; he’s a billionaire, he lives in a gorgeous mansion off the coast of Malibu, women flock to him, he takes one of them home almost every night. He has his choice of opportunities, his choice of women, his choice of everything.

He is on top of the world. 

There’s nothing he can’t do. He is told this several thousand times a day, from multiple news sites, employees, and one-night stands. He believes it. So he pushes his brain farther, faster. He does more. He creates weapons, tools to use; but he doesn't care who he's sending them against. All he knows is that they're keeping his company alive.

He pushes his brain, or so he thinks. He builds hundreds of missiles and shows them off to the world. 

Then they blow up in his face. Literally. 

He is Tony Stark, and he is in the hands of terrorists.

It all happens so fast; he should have expected it, but he was too drunk on his own influence to see it. Of course. If you demolish someone’s home, they’re going to have it out for you. 

And now a car battery is keeping him alive, and he has to use the thing he loves most about himself to help the people who captured him. Who tortured him. 

Who are going to kill him. 

Two options, he’s got two options: help a group of terrorists, or die.

He doesn’t like either option. So he invents a third. 

He has no plans for it; he doesn’t know if he’ll even live another day. But building it puts life back into him, makes him strong when he shouldn't have any strength left. He’s not thinking past the next day, he is only working. Working, working, day in and day out. 

_Cling-clang._

He’s beyond exhaustion. He's a celebrity, a famous billionaire; he shouldn't have the strength to be doing this, hardly sleeping, only working. It's not even hope, at this point. There's no hope left. There is only survival. 

_Cling-clang._

Until finally, it’s over, and he hasn’t been killed.

Now he has hope. It’s time to play. 

But before he can even test it, the one man who’s shown pity on him, who somehow sees straight through his playboy facade, is killed. 

_Don't waste your life, Stark,_ are his last words. Then he's gone. 

Playtime is over. 

He has no thought for himself; he doesn’t even want to get out, at this point. He wishes he could. He wishes he could go back and make everything better, listen to Happy, stop making life hell for Rhodey, treat Miss Potts like she is: the only person who genuinely cares about him. 

But he can’t. 

So he torches everything in sight, the terrorists, their weapons, his weapons. All of it, especially the Jericho missiles, until the suit is spent and he’s lying half dead in the middle of the desert. 

He’s won. But he hasn’t survived…

Until, beyond all hope, a helicopter flying overhead. Looking for him, he realizes, drags himself out of his stupor to flag them down. 

_Next time you ride with me,_ Happy tells him, but he’s not thinking about that. He’s thinking how spectacular it is that he got out of that hell. 

And if he could do that, just with his own brain...what else can he do? 

Tony flies back to America, steps off the private plane. He’s back. He survived, but he’s nowhere near finished. Everything’s changed. 

This, his return, is the first miracle. 

But it won't be the last. 


	2. A Bunch Of Scraps

As soon as he can, he needs to fire Obadiah. 

So far he can’t see a way around it; but clearly the two of them are coming to a fork in the road: Obie’s gotten as power-hungry as Tony used to be, he wants to keep making weapons. Which Tony can understand, since his dad’s old friend hadn’t been in Afghanistan; but he can’t make weapons anymore. 

Not when, every time he closes his eyes, he can see them exploding in his face. 

That’s what leads him to make the entire project a secret. 

He doesn’t know what he’s going to do with it. Not yet. But the Ten Rings are far from finished, and he needs to do the job. If he wants to sleep at night, he has to at least do that. 

It’s a long process--hours of drawing up plans, working out formulas, drinking a pot of coffee a day, testing out the material. He’s not alone; he’s got Jarvis and DUM-E for company. They’ll help him, better than any humans could. 

Well, except Pepper. But she’d be too worried to do it. 

She’s already worried, but she isn’t the only one. Obadiah thinks he’s going insane, Rhodey doesn’t want to be involved in any capacity. 

Tony doesn’t care. For the first time in years, he’s actually living. 

Then, finally, the day comes: he can fly. Screw everything else, he can actually freaking  _ fly.  _ So, on an impulse, he decides to test the thing. 

It’s the best damn night of his life. 

Sure, he almost kills himself flying too high, gets seen by thousands of people, and he has a killer headache for the next three days...but the thrill he gets, that glorious sense of danger, is absolutely worth it. It’s more than worth it. 

For once, he might have actually surpassed his dad. 

And that’s better than anything else about the entire project. 


	3. Torching The Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first turning point.

_ It’s a town called Gulmira. Heard of it? _

How has everything changed this fast? How is this possible? 

His missiles. His destructive Jericho missiles, in the hands of the men he’d  _ just escaped from.  _

It’s like...it’s like he didn’t even do anything. 

It’s like that entire session in the cave, Yinsen’s sacrifice...it was all for nothing. 

He’s right back where he started. A selfish asshole only out for money. Only profiting from his damn company. 

_ Don’t waste it. Don’t waste your life.  _

Now. Now he understands what Yinsen meant. 

Thirty-eight. He was thirty-eight years old. 

At twenty-eight, his dad had helped end the second World War with the atomic bomb. 

Tony is ten years older than Howard had been in 1944, and he’s wasted all of it. His entire life, worth nothing. 

The news broadcast is awful, torturous; but he puts it on. Puts it on, as he makes some adjustments to the Mark III...and makes himself watch homes be blown apart, children shout for their parents. 

Women are taken away to be sex slaves to the people who tortured him. 

Men are murdered by the people who tortured him. 

It’s too much, all of it; to know his life is a waste, even when he  _ thought,  _ in that cave, that he was doing something. He’s furious, he can barely contain his rage, all the pent-up fury; he has to let it out. He shatters the lights, shatters the perfect mirrors, tears up his workroom that’s paid for, like everything else in his life, in blood. 

No more. 

He’s not even thinking at this point. Just moving. He walks onto the pad where the suit is attached to him, one piece at a time; gears and hinges snapping into place, red and gold armor to light up the skies. 

An hour ago, he cared about how it looked. 

Now, all he’s thinking about is what it can do. It can kill...and it can protect. 

He needs to do both of those things. 

The journey across the ocean is much too long. It takes time; time when more people are killed using the very weapons he created. Determination drives him on. 

He’s going to end it all. 

At last, he comes down in the middle of a family being killed. He moves like a machine, relentless; the bullets don’t touch him, he kills all the terrorists, hunts down one man who tried to escape...one of the men who tormented him. 

Good. He throws him to the people he tried to kill and takes off. 

A missile knocks him down--he destroys it. 

But he doesn’t stop there. 

All his missiles are in range, and he unleashes the full strength of the suit on them; his creations, sure, but he’s using a better creation to do it. He doesn’t care how many terrorists he kills, how much land he torches to do it; but all the missiles are set aflame, the fire raging across the landscape. It takes minutes, but eventually they’re gone. Every single one. 

His mission is accomplished. He takes off into the sky, and as he flies, there’s a feeling in his chest, something he hasn’t felt in a long, long time. 

After a while, he realizes what it is. 

It’s fulfillment. 

For the first time in his life, he’s not wasting anything. 


	4. Not A Waste

There’s an unfortunate skirmish on the way back; he should have expected it. He runs into a few of Rhodey’s pilots, because he was certainly not supposed to be in Gulmira. 

It’s unfortunate because someone almost dies for his sake. 

He doesn’t know why that bothers him. He can’t put a finger on it But he saves the pilot, and the feeling goes away. It’s replaced by a giddy rush of dopamine. 

He needs to keep doing this. He needs to keep saving people. 

_ I finally know what I have to do,  _ he tells Pepper later. And it’s true. 

And it gets her to stay, which he wants. He suspects that he wants it because the night before, he had a dream about her. It’s the kind that he usually only has about Victoria’s Secret models, and that’s sure not something he wants to tell his most loyal assistant. 

Besides, his latent feelings for Pepper are eclipsed by something else: betrayal. 

Obadiah’s working with the Ten Rings. He tried to have Tony killed. He sold the missiles, and he’s doing it all for the money. 

It would be fine, because Tony’s suspected it for a few weeks now. 

But he finds out the worst possible way: from Obadiah himself. His dad’s friend paralyzes him, tells him the truth, and takes the arc reactor out of his chest. 

It takes a minute for him to realize what just happened.  _ He’s dying.  _

He’ll die here, on this couch, and Obadiah will take control of the company. 

Obadiah will continue to sell weapons. To kill innocents. To get money and investments paid with in blood. 

_ Don’t waste your life.  _

That thought is the only thing that keeps Tony moving, all the way to his workroom downstairs, dragging himself forward. 

_ Don’t waste your life.  _

Thank God Pepper kept the first arc reactor, against his wishes. He’ll have to thank her after this. He’d find her to thank her now, except he’s currently about two minutes from having the shrapnel pierce his heart. 

Then Rhodey shows up, and everything is much better. 

The arc reactor isn’t as good. Tony knew that. But it’s  _ something.  _

He gets into the suit. He’s still recovering, still trying to catch his breath, but all he can do is keep moving. Pepper and Happy and God knows who else are in danger from Obadiah right now, and he has to save them. 

_ Don’t waste it.  _

He’s just in time. He bursts through the ceiling, just as Pepper is escaping from Obadiah, who’s clearly on a rampage. 

Then comes the worst fight of Tony’s life so far. 

He can barely recognize the man any longer; Obadiah has his arc reactor, and has made a prototype based on the Mark I, so he should have a disadvantage...but he clearly has only one goal in mind, to kill Tony. And he has a total disregard for anyone else’s lives. 

Tony doesn’t. He can’t, not when he’s been the reason so many other people have died. He almost kills his suit saving a family, but he does it anyway. 

He spent so much of his life caring about himself. This might be the last night of his life, and he needs to use it caring about other people. 

After that, he gets Obadiah to follow him into the sky; he knows about the ice build-up, after all, and it catches the guy by surprise. Tony barely gets back home alive, running on emergency power...but he does it. He’s won, and what’s better, he’s still alive. 

And then Obadiah comes back. He’s furious now; he wants to kill Tony and anyone else who might stand in his way. 

And Tony’s reactor has no power left. 

But he does have one more option. He can have Pepper operate the big one. 

_ You’ll die,  _ she shouts at him. 

He knows that. He knew it the second he told her to do it, and he hates the idea of him dying now, when he’s just learned what’s important in life. 

But. 

_ Don’t waste it.  _

Yinsen’s last words keep driving him forward, when he’s tempted to fall back into his old ways. 

_ Don’t waste your life.  _

So he hangs on, by one arm, the perfect bait for Obadiah as Pepper turns on the giant reactor and sends waves of electricity rocketing up into the sky. 


	5. The Superhero

When he wakes up...God, that’s the first miracle, isn’t it? That he wakes up. 

But when he wakes up, there’s an entire debacle ahead of him. Obadiah’s dead, everyone heard what happened, the city’s in chaos. Fortunately, he has a cover story. 

Unfortunately, it’s a crap-ass cover story. 

He was on a yacht; he missed the entire thing. A bodyguard stopped Obadiah. 

He doesn’t say it to the officer--what’s his name, Coulson?--but that’s the most insulting part. A bodyguard. A bodyguard is going to take credit for everything he did, everything he worked to do? 

And the picture painted of _him_ is that he was away the entire time. 

He needs to paint a different picture. He needs to change the way people see him. 

But a superhero? This...Metal Man, Iron Man? That’s kids’ stuff. That’s not the way to go about it. 

Before he goes up, he has a moment with Pepper. He does have feelings for her, her realizes...but he also realizes he’s not good for her. He’d be an awful boyfriend; he’d probably cheat on her the first chance he got. 

So nothing will ever happen between the two of them. 

_Stick to the cards,_ Rhodey tells him. He needs to stick to the cards, for now, until he figures out a better explanation. 

But, a bodyguard. A bodyguard? Really? 

_The truth is._

Why can’t he say it? He can’t. He can’t say it, he can’t say the words...

He’s not going to let anyone think he’s just Howard’s kid. 

He’s got to be something else. 

_The truth is…_

Tony stares at the cards. 

_The truth is, I would never be involved in something like that. That’s ridiculous. I got captured by terrorists while surrounded by military, you really think I'd be able to stop something that big?_

That’s what they say. He can’t say it. 

“The truth is…”

One thought goes through his head: _Oh, what the hell._

“I am Iron Man.”


	6. The Visitor

_The Avengers Initiative._

First, he barely hears the words. He's too furious that this _jerk_ had the gall to get past Jarvis and into _his house._

When he's stopped being angry--he pours himself a drink, and that helps--the words register. 

"Avengers," he says out loud. "Cool name, what are you starting, a boy band? Secret club?"

"If only it were that simple," the man says--Fury, he'd said his name was. That had to be made up, who had a name like that? "If my plan works, I will have formed a team of people with...special abilities." 

Abilities. Suddenly it dawns on him. He'd told the world he was Iron Man, now everyone thought he was a superhero. 

"Oh, so, what?" The glass is almost gone; he pours himself another. "You think I'm the hero type? That I want to spend my entire life saving people and throwing myself in danger?" 

"Yes," Fury says, staring him directly in the eyes. "That's exactly what I think." 

"But...okay, ignoring your insane proposition, there are a few more issues. Avengers? Really? I mean, what the hell are we avenging?" 

"Nothing." Fury takes the liberty of pouring himself a drink, and now Tony really wants to put on the suit and get this guy out of here. "Yet." 

"I mean, why the Avengers? Why not the Protectors, the Guardians, you know?"

Fury only stared at him with that unnerving stare. 

"I have my reasons." 

"Oh, right, should've guessed that. You get everything in this scenario, don't you? A team at your disposal, all the security you could ever want, right? But there's one thing you'll never have." Tony sets the glass down. "Me." 

After Fury's left, he's sure he'll just forget the whole thing. But he stays up, looking out the window for hours. Thinking. 

Avenger Initiative. A team of heroes. 

Tony scoffs. Who would ever think he'd want to be a part of that? 


	7. World Peace

_I have successfully privatized world peace._

Well. Might be a little arrogant, sure, but it's also true. Without him, the world would be a much worse place. These stuffy senators should be _grateful_ to him, and yet they have the nerve to demand his suits. _His suits,_ created by him and him alone, in the hands of the government? 

He's always disliked authority. Now he knows why.

He decides then and there that he'll never sign his abilities over to anyone. Not the Avengers, not the government. Just him.

And that's pretty much what he tells them. 

He leaves on top of the world. He's in control of everything, and no one will take it from him. 

Of course, there's also the matter of the core he'd created to save his life that's slowly poisoning him. Oh, well. He'll take care of that later. 


	8. Natalie

It starts with something he'd never have said six months ago: he's making Pepper his CEO. 

She's stunned, of course, but she doesn't know the full story. She doesn't get it. She doesn't get that Tony needs to keep making improvements, needs to keep adjusting the suits, to keep them away from the government. 

And to find a way to keep himself alive. 

The notary is unfortunately a gorgeous woman--Natalie Rushman, she says her name is. Why can't important people ever be men? That way he could just do all the things he needs to do without staring at her perfectly curled hair--he always liked redheads--the lips he knows he could kiss for an hour, that gorgeous hourglass figure--

Then she bodyslams Happy to the ground. 

Somehow, that turns him on even more. 

Natalie's provided a nice distraction from what's going on...because afterward he does another test. 

The palladium's spread. 

He's going to die, and he hasn't gotten anything figured out. What happens next is a reasonable turn of events, but one that makes everything a little worse. 

No, scratch that, a lot worse. 

Stark Industries is sponsoring a racer at the Monaco 500. It's something he's always wanted to do. Now he's going to die soon, so why not do it now? 

Before he knows it, the track is chaos. 

It's some guy named Ivan Vanko--Vanko, he's heard that name somewhere.

Soon he's out of the car and running for his life from those whips Vanko keeps throwing at him--

Then Happy and Pepper show up with his suit. Good. 

And Vanko's whips start tearing through it. Not so good. 

Not good at all. 

Not good because Tony can't stop him. The police have to do it. 

"YOU LOSE!" he shouts at Tony, but that's not the worst of it. No one can know what is.

No one can know that Iron Man is dying. 


	9. A Dead Man

_If you can make God bleed, he will cease to exist._

The words echo in Tony's head long after Vanko's escaped prison. Helped by Justin Hammer, no less, one of his enemies. 

Things are getting worse. 

It's too much, it's all too damn much. People are coming at him from all sides: the government that wants his suits, Vanko who wants his life, Hammer who wants his fortune, the palladium poisoning that also wants his life...and now Pepper doesn't trust him. 

He's _trying,_ doesn't anyone _get that?_ Doesn't anyone think that Tony Stark, who's upended everything about his life in half a year, might have a few issues? 

He's never felt more alone. 

He's going to die alone, misunderstood by the person he really wants to _get him._ Pepper. 

So he throws a party. 

Afterward, he barely remembers it--barely remembers telling potty jokes about his suit, drinking glass after glass, letting Natalie test out his suit--it's all a blur. 

What he does remember, though, is Rhodey. 

That hurts the worst of all. 

Rhodey, his best friend, who puts up with all his crap, takes the Mark II--that's his triumph, his baby, he took that thing into the skies on the best night of his life--and challenges him to a fight. 

Tony doesn't want to, he really doesn't want to...but his body and mind are two separate things right now. Stupidly, he fights his best friend. 

He doesn't win. 

He doesn't lose, either. Not the fight, anyway. 

He loses the suit. 

The suit belongs to the government. 

And that, more than anything else, makes him wish the palladium would finish him off. 


	10. The Second Miracle

That damn Avengers Initiative. 

This stupid hero thing, it runs everything, doesn't it? Because now Nick Fury's spying on him, Natalie Rushman is a _Shield agent named Natasha Romanoff, really, what the actual hell,_ and he's under house arrest. 

There's also something in him that _wants_ to be an Avenger. Wants to be accepted. He doesn't know why; he doesn't need anyone. 

But the fact of the matter is he's under house arrest, stupid Phil Coulson watching him night and day. 

In the meantime, Fury actually deigns to give him answers. Tony learns that Vanko and his dad were partners, and what's more, Howard actually helped found Shield. 

He'd never expected that. 

The knowledge plants some curiosity in him. He watches an old recording of his dad from 1974, watches himself as a little kid; he wants to shut it off. He knows his dad didn't love him, didn't care about him as much as his work. Why would--

_My greatest creation is you._

Maybe he's wrong. 

No. There are a lot of things people don't like about him. They all come from Howard. 

But still...

A new element. He was building a new element. 

Could it be...?

The old fire comes roaring back--the fire he's been waiting for, that drove him to build that armor in the cave with nothing but scrap metal, the fire that sent him across the ocean to blow up the Ten Rings, the fire that got him to drag himself across the floor, just to give himself an arc reactor and live. 

It's the will to live. He _wants_ to live; but more than that, he wants to beat the hell out of Vanko. 

He doesn't know how long he's been working, but when he's done, he's invented the new element. 

It cures his poisoning. 

He's saved himself. 

That's the second miracle. 


	11. The Drones

Coulson has been reassigned, and Tony's free to go.

Not a moment too soon. 

Vanko's programmed drones with Rhodey in charge--and when Tony shows up, it becomes all too clear that Vanko has control of Rhodey's suit, and he's trying to make him kill Tony. 

Once again, everyone's trying to kill him. 

But this time, he at least has people helping him. 

Natasha and Happy go to take down Vanko--it works, and just in time, as they've almost shot down Tony. Now Rhodey's in control of his suit again, and they can fight the drones. Together. 

During the chase, something catches his attention--a kid, dressed up in an...an Iron Man costume, holding up his hand to fight the drones. 

Tony saves him without thinking twice. Is he...do kids really respect him like that? They want to _be_ him?

He's not exactly a role model. But he's not complaining. 

The drones are defeated in short order, but their problems are far from gone; Vanko shows up in an updated version of the armor. 

But Tony's still got the fire in him. He has an idea. 

At the party, during the fight between him and Rhodey, their energy repulses had collided, creating an explosion. 

If Vanko were to be caught in it...

Rhodey accepts the plan right away. And it works. 

Of course it does. He's freaking Tony Stark.

The fight's not quite over; it turns out the drones were all set to self destruct, and Pepper's going to die. 

He saves her, just in time. 

Then he finally tells her the truth, about his chest, the poisoning, everything. 

He expects the screaming that comes after. 

What he doesn't expect is the kiss. 

_Well,_ he thinks. _Being a superhero sure has its perks._


	12. Howard's Friend

It was supposed to be date night. 

He'd come back to Stark Tower--brilliant idea, it's Pepper's baby--hoping to take a break for once, get dressed, have a nice dinner with his girl. 

Five minutes later, he found himself flying to Germany. 

Some guy named Loki, they said, he stole a...a tesseract, that sounded familiar from his dad's notes but he couldn't place it. He stole the tesseract, headed off on a rampage, and it's up to Tony to stop him. 

He only agreed because of two years ago. If he doesn't protect people, soon they'll say he's not doing enough and try to take the suit away. Again. 

(Besides, he gets to make a dramatic entrance and save everyone's lives, which is also fun.) 

What he isn't expecting is to see _Captain Freaking America._

He does save the guy, which is fun. Howard had talked about Steve Rogers like he was some sort of god, telling Tony stories about how Captain America could lift cars, Captain America could jump between falling platforms across a blazing fire, Captain America could jump thousands of feet from aircraft. 

Tony can't deny that he's wanted to meet him, ever since he heard that Steve Rogers was actually alive. 

But it turns out he's just stuck up. 

Stuck up, rigid, blindly righteous. 

_Shouldn't be that easy,_ he said. As if he's the only one who sees things like that. As if he's the only one who figured it out and Tony's some lower rank officer who he can order around. 

Of course it's not easy, Tony wants to say. Surviving under the ice for seventy years isn't damn easy either. 

But he doesn't say it, he never outright insults people. No, he survives by being kind of a jerk to everyone. 

_There's a lot of things Fury doesn't tell you._

Yeah, fight back. Make _him_ feel like the naive one. 

And then a second later, just when Tony thinks he's got a handle on Mister Rogers, there's a flash of lightning and another goddamn god breaks in to take Loki. 

"We need a plan," Captain America calls after him. Trying to take charge of everything, is he? Yeah. Right. You're gonna take on two gods with that shield. 

"I have a plan. Attack," Tony shoots back for good measure, before taking off into the sky. The farther he gets away from the Rock of Ages, the better. 

He doesn't need another relic of his dad's coming back to haunt him. 


	13. Time Bomb

Thor. Thor the god. Thor the _second_ god, if you count Loki, who Tony hasn't really seen do anything yet. 

All right. Fine. Just fine. Like that's so much stranger than everything else he's seen in the past three years. 

He guesses he got a little carried away, fighting Thor; he didn't really intend to go all Rambo on him, but the thing is for three years he's been the only superhero. Sure there was sexy-Natalia-AKA-Natasha-the-trickass-spy, sure there's that archer, but they're just agents. They have _abilities._

They don't have superpowers. They're not the one person the universe depends on; and he hasn't realized it until now, but he'd actually been enjoying it. It was his job. 

Then these two nutjobs show up: the tighter than tight man out of time, and now the...the thunder god. 

The thunder god who seems to be just as egotistic as Tony knows he is. 

So they go at it. Tony didn't mean to. He really didn't. 

But that doesn't mean Mister Rogers has to break it up. Like he's the superior being here. Because that's clearly what he thinks. And it pisses Tony off. God, it _really_ pisses him off.

Because he knows he's not as good. 

So he stops acting like a hero. Was he cut out for it? Not really. He's supposed to be the snarky, reluctant guy who shows up at the last minute to save the day. Like Han Solo. 

Not that the Capsicle knows who that is. 

"I understood that reference," he says, _proudly,_ about a movie from the freaking 1930s, and Tony rolls his eyes so hard he's surprised he doesn't get brain damage. Dumbass. 

They're not the only ones who don't work together. Natasha and Clint are the only ones who _would,_ except that Clint's a vegetable right now so Natasha's more on edge than anyone, trading banter with Thor, getting on Tony's case. She thinks she's so much better than him too, doesn't she? 

Banner, who he thought he'd have something in common with, but Banner's more reluctant than anyone else in the room. He's scared of his own shadow. 

Thor doesn't understand anything until he can pick them apart like the god he is. "You people are so petty. And tiny."

What's Tony supposed to be? Insulted? Petty's his middle name. 

And Fury, Fury who got them all together, he can't stay out of the fight either. He's accusing Thor, accusing Tony himself, and they can't shut their mouths. 

"We're a time bomb."

The scientist sees the truth, and they all should've listened to him. But they don't because then Roger's goes off at Tony again--"you're not the guy to make the sacrifice play"--and that's it. That's the last straw. 

Because that's the only thing he's been doing from the very beginning. 

Tony's almost glad when they're attacked. It shuts Rogers up. 


	14. The Idea

"There was an idea, Stark knows this, called the Avengers Initiative." 

He doesn't want to know it. He knows what Fury's gonna say, he knows he's going to give Rogers the same pitch he gave Tony, about being damned _heroes._ They're not heroes. At least, Tony isn't; and despite Rogers' do-gooder attitude, he's not either. 

"The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to." 

_Well, we didn't, Fury, what do you think about that?_ Tony wants to snap. _Because guess what? Turns out we're just as disgustingly human as the rest of you. What did you think? That we were gonna be the second coming of Christ?_

 _"_ To fight the battles that we never could." 

_And we didn't. Because we're human, and we can't do everything you want us to do. So don't be disappointed when we fail you, jackass._

"Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea...in heroes."

He had the nerve to say _that,_ did he? Bring up Coulson, as a last ditch effort to guilt trip them into fighting for him? It wasn't going to work on him, and Fury knew it; but it would work on Rogers, because he still thought he was a good person. Still thought authority was good. 

Coulson had been the only person in this miserable project who had been semi-decent. Tony had liked him when the guy bullied him into living again two years ago; he'd liked him now. He was the only reason Tony had bothered to be here. 

And now he's gone, and so is Tony's one motivation. Fury isn't going to control him. 

He'll control the others. And Tony isn't going to see them die. 

Without a word, he gets up and leaves the room. 

"It's an old-fashioned notion," he hears in the distance. 

He doesn't care. 


End file.
